The freestyle stroke is one of the most straightforward swimming styles, and you can learn it quickly. It’s a front type of swimming, with your face facing the bottom of the pool and your body in the streamlined floating position.
You’ll only use your arms and legs to move through the water. The rest of your body needs to remain as level as possible. Remember to keep your head facing down, as lifting your head can make you lose balance and start to sink.
How to Swim Freestyle
To get us started, you want to start practising freestyle using your legs before moving on to your arms.
So, while you're in the streamlined floating position, start to kick the water, one foot after the other. You need to kick the water using the top part of your feet.
For the best results, try to arch your feet. Meanwhile, keep your arms stretched out in front of you and your head facing down.
How to Do the Freestyle Front Crawl Kick
Mastering the front crawl kick is important. It can make all the difference in how fast you propel through the water. Also, contrary to popular belief, kicking harder and faster doesn’t necessarily make you swim faster.
So, first things first, you want to stretch your legs and keep your feet close together. Then, use the same perspective on walking. When you walk, you usually swing your leg from your hip rather than your knees, right? So, you want to do the same while swimming, initiating the front crawl kick from your hip.
Again, when walking, your knees will only slightly bend, so the same happens in freestyle. Finally, finish up with the feet, where your feet move downward at the surface of the water.
The front crawl kick has two motions: the upward hip movement and the downward foot kick. Alternate your leg motion: as one leg goes down, the other comes up.
How to Do the Hand Entry
Once you have kicking locked in, move on to your arms. Now, to start, keep your arms stretched out before you, but this time, put your palms facing down, one palm beside the other.
Then, begin to float, kick your legs, and rotate your right hand anticlockwise. This means your right hand will move from before you, down into the water, passing next to your thigh, then out of the water and back to before you.
Still with me? Good.
When your right hand returns back to the forward position, do the same using your left hand. A quick tip here is always to keep your palm open. Even as you push your hand backwards through the water and out into the air, your palm needs always to remain open. Also, you want your arms to come sweeping by just next to your thighs.
Now, for the last part. You want to speed up the hand process. This time, as you pull your right hand through the water, your left hand should be extending back to the front and vice versa. Makes sense? Don’t worry. Watch the video above to see what you may have missed.
Breathing While Swimming
Okay, now for the final part. How do you breathe while swimming? Well, you use your mouth. It's easier that way. Breathe in the air through your mouth. While swimming, breathe out inside the water by blowing air into the water.
For freestyle, as you rotate your left hand to the front, tilt your head to your right side and breathe in through the mouth. As a guide, you can look to the side of the pool and breathe in through the mouth. Why not lift your head to breathe, you ask? Well, lifting your head causes you to lose balance. It causes 'sinking legs.' Tilting your head, though, maintains your balance throughout the drill.
It can be little tricky at first, so hey, keep practising, eventually perfecting breathing in on either the left or right side. With swimming, you need to be ready to drink the water unintentionally, and sometimes have it go up your nose too!
At this point, you can safely swim to the deep end and back. Though, ask someone to watch you the first time you attempt to do so. All in all, swimming is so much fun and hardly as difficult as you may think. All it takes is practice - a few days to weeks maximum - and a special love for the water to get to the pro level.
And there you go! You now have your first swimming style locked in!
Tips to Perfect Your Freestyle Stroke
Quick tips to note here:
Your palms always remain open.
As you bring your arms forward, they should re-enter the water with the tips of your fingers first. This means you need to arch your hand at the wrist as you prepare to dip back into the water.
You may find that keeping your arms straight throughout is tiring (or near impossible), especially as you pull back the water. So, you want to slightly bend your arms at the elbow as you pull the water to your thighs and as you prepare for hand entry into the water.
Remember, always keep your head facing the bottom of the pool when swimming.
And, always, tilt your head to the side when breathing in.
Don't worry if these tips take a minute to kick in. You can always get better with time.
Resources to Help You Get Better
Keep a lookout for updates on breaststroke and backstroke swimming styles. I'll also cover treading, which is how you can pass the time at the deep end without using too much energy. Also, I’ll update more advanced techniques like the butterfly with time. There are levels to swimming, with always something new to learn.
Meanwhile, you can follow Swimgym on Instagram. They have useful slow-motion videos to help you identify any mistakes you’re making and patch them out. And, as always, let me know of any questions or concerns you may have via email at joycegicheha.writer@gmail.com.